This invention relates generally to telephony and more specifically to telephone network user features.
Conferences by telephone, hereinafter referred to as teleconferences, are becoming increasingly popular in today""s technological world. A teleconference session allows people at different locations to confer and discuss without having to either physically be together or have numerous two party telephone conversations.
A large number of telephone handsets can be added within a single teleconference session such that all the parties can speak and listen to the discussion. Such discussions, although having the advantage of allowing a large number of people to speak, has the disadvantage of receiving noise from each of the individual handsets. Thus, as the number of participants in a teleconference session is increased, the quality of the telephone signals is degraded. This becomes more pronounced when considering participants who are located within high background noise areas such as airports or participants utilizing cellular telephones within high interference locations.
To combat these problems, a mute feature has been previously designed with which a user may turn off the microphone for their handset by pressing a mute button on the telephone handset. This mute feature can currently be found on handsets whose primary purpose is teleconferencing. The key advantage of this feature is that parties who are not adding to the conversation may turn off their respective microphones in order to reduce the overall background noise on the telephone line while still allowing such parties to listen to the full discussion.
Unfortunately, such a mute feature cannot currently be found within most telephone handsets from which a person could be participating in a teleconference session. For example, this feature is not offered on pay telephones which are typically located where very high background noise exists. Since the addition of this mute feature requires modifications to a telephone handset""s hardware, it is unlikely that a mute function that turns off a telephone handset""s microphone will be implemented in all telephone handsets.
An additional problem with the mute feature as currently offered is that it does not reduce the noise that is generated by the transmission means between the telephone handsets and their respective switches. Noise generated in these transmission means can be significant, especially if using a wireless telephone.
Therefore, a new mute feature is required that can reduce the background noise during a teleconference session without requiring the use of a specially designed telephone handset. This new mute feature should be capable of removing background noise generated by both the environment the handset is located within and the transmission means utilized.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art and, in an exemplary embodiment, to provide a system and method by which a telephone handset can be muted within a telephone network.
According to a first aspect, the present invention provides a control apparatus arranged to be implemented within a telecommunication switch which is adapted to interconnect a plurality of telephone stations via respective transmit and receive paths established in the switch, the control apparatus monitoring for receipt of a session mute signal sent from any telephone station and, if the session mute signal is detected, interrupting the transmit path associated with that telephone station.
According to a second aspect, the present invention provides in a telecommunication switch adapted to interconnect a plurality of telephone stations via respective transmit and receive paths established in the switch, a method of selectively interrupting the transmit path of a telephone station comprising the steps of: monitoring for receipt of a session mute signal sent from any telephone station; and interrupting, if the session mute signal is detected, the transmit path associated with that telephone station.
According to a third aspect, the present invention provides a control apparatus arranged to be implemented within a telecommunication switch which is adapted to interconnect a plurality of telephone stations via respective transmit and receive paths established in the switch, the control apparatus monitoring for receipt of at least one of a session volume increase signal and a session volume decrease signal sent from any telephone station and, if at least one of the session volume increase signal and the session volume decrease signal is detected, adjusting the transmit path associated with that telephone station in order to perform one of an increase and a decrease of the volume at a receiving telephone handset.
According to a fourth aspect, the present invention provides a telecommunication switch incorporating the control apparatus of either the first or third aspect, that is adapted to interconnect a plurality of telephone stations via respective transmit and receive paths established in the switch.